October 29, 2012 AT 12:00 am

“Makers” and the DIY movement

In the title of his latest book, Wired Editor Chris Anderson is clear that he thinks the maker movement will change the world. Enabled by a swath of new technologies, the hacker culture known for tinkering with computer software is moving into the physical world, giving rise to new forms of art, manufacturing, and industrial design. And as Anderson explains in “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution,” this union of Web culture and the real world could change everything from American manufacturing to business creation to primary and secondary education.

Anderson sat down with Slate editor David Plotz Thursday evening at a Future Tense happy hour at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center in Washington, DC, to discuss the power of the maker movement and celebrate the release of his new book.

Of all the technologies driving the maker movement, few get more attention than the 3-D printer. Cheap computers, feature-rich smartphones, thriving online communities, and physical hacker spaces have all bolstered the Do It Yourself mentality, so what makes the 3-D printer so revolutionary? Makers cherish machines like MakerBot, but at the end of the day, as Plotz put it, they’re just “extruding some plastic doodad.”

“Let us not discount that extruding a plastic doodad is kind of amazing just by itself,” Anderson said. The 3-D printer follows a trend of new technology empowering individuals to create in ways they haven’t been able to before. Personal computers and desktop printers gave rise to desktop publishing in the 1980s, when anyone could write, design, and publish whatever they wanted from their home office. Then publishing moved to the Web, where centuries of printing technologies fused into a single “publish” button on a Web page.